


Audienne

by Misaya



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Blind Character, Child Eren Yeager, Domestic, Eruri Week, Established Levi/Erwin Smith, Established Relationship, Levi-centric (Shingeki no Kyojin), Light Angst, M/M, Parent Erwin Smith, Parent Levi (Shingeki no Kyojin), Parenthood, Senses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-02
Updated: 2015-12-09
Packaged: 2018-04-12 13:07:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 20,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4480265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Misaya/pseuds/Misaya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is not darkness. It is just a different form of light. </p><p>Blind!Levi x Erwin, with kid!Eren.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Auguries

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kiitsuo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kiitsuo/gifts), [KeepersoftheFaith](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KeepersoftheFaith/gifts), [CommanderBaewin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CommanderBaewin/gifts).



> Context: At the beginning of this story, they're already married, and have already been adoptive parents to Eren since he was a smol jelly bean baby.

It starts like this, the rise leading to the fall, act one's curtain call sweeping velvet across the stage of Levi's eyelids. The phosphenes glow frantic and effervescent beneath his fingertips as he rubs at his eyes to wash away the last sticky remembrances of his dreams, one hand fumbling over the broad span of Erwin's shoulders, still slack and loose with slumber and yielding beneath his fingertips. The plastic and metal frame of his glasses is cool beneath the touch, the weight of the ground lenses calmingly substantial in his hands as he lifts them to his face and brings the world swimming into cool clarity again. 

Erwin's jaw is dotted with fine pinpricks of coarse blond stubble smoothing their way over the planes of his jawbone with creeping fingers, but he presses a kiss to the corner of Erwin's mouth anyway. Habit. Tradition. Ritual, even if it itches at the bow of his lips and he has to run his fingertips across them, cool, chapped, to take away the tickle. 

The shadows of Erwin's lashes flutter like swallows over his cheekbones in the early morning light. The digital clock on the nightstand reads a firm 6:14 A.M. in glaring, almost accusatory crimson, sixteen minutes away from its shrill scream. Levi savors the knowledge of his free time, the soft cooing sounds of doves outside the only thing to punctuate the silence. The morning paints Erwin's face in rose and gold, silent fingers casting him angelic, and Levi's breath catches in his throat. 

Appreciation, aching almost in its longevity. 

The clock ticks around to 6:17 A.M., digits flipping over into each other, and Levi studies the way Erwin sleeps with abandon, limbs flung haphazard to cast silhouettes and mountains and valleys across the mattress and bedsheets, silky blue cotton beneath Levi's hands. Blonde hair musses messy across his husband's forehead, flaxen gold starting to thread through with silver, and Levi's fingers itch to reach out and smooth it back. But no. Thirteen more minutes, he promises himself. Just thirteen more. 

Erwin's left hand rests against his stomach, fingers twitching slightly, curling around something in his dreams, and Levi smiles fondly at the way the titanium loop gleams silver against his husband's ring finger. A promise, a vow, a fulfillment years in the making. 

Ten more minutes.

He curls his legs up beneath him, hugging his knees to his chest in the soft winter chill, absentmindedly tracing the tails of one of Erwin's old night shirts where they flutter pastel green against his thigh. The shirt has holes in it, and Erwin loves it fondly, loves wearing it and loves Levi wearing it even more, eyes tracing hungry over how it drapes across Levi's shoulders, the promise of the night hidden away in milky panels that peek out at the collar, the right sleeve, the swell of his left hip. The cotton is soft, several loads of laundry past, signs of well-loved clothing, and even though Erwin has loads of other nightshirts folded away in drawers in his closet, Levi picks this one out of the laundry basket over everything else, every time. 

Seven more minutes. 

His heart swells again. Paces itself just a bit quicker as Erwin mumbles something in his dreams, eyes flicking from side to side under the soft velvet of his eyelids. A grin darts, quicksilver flash, left corner to right, and Levi knows that Erwin is dreaming about him. 

"Levi." It is barely a whisper, barely a murmur, but Levi hears it anyway, has come to expect it as a confirmation, a benediction, a blessing. 

Four minutes. 

Levi counts down the seconds. 

Erwin swallows back a noise, and Levi's eyes flick back up to his face, traces the swell of his Adam's apple, the rise and fall. 

Beauty and grace. 

Two minutes. 

The sun breaks over the horizon now, struggling fully into the sky, painting the underbellies of the clouds pastel like the most marvelous painter. Levi grins as the warmth kisses against his bare legs and turns the cream of his skin into palest honey. 

One minute. 

Levi pushes up his glasses on the bridge of his nose. The frame is new, keeps slipping, and he's still getting used to the weight of them aching against his ears. 

The alarm shrills, screams, breaking the peace, and Levi hastens to turn it off even as Erwin flings himself out of the depths of his dream with a startled "Mmph." He props himself up on his elbows, looking at Levi blearily, eyebrows furrowed and ruffled, and Levi would laugh if Erwin hadn't looked so disgruntled. 

"Morning," Levi murmurs, teasingly, eyes crinkling at the corners. Erwin's face blurs, flickers with dark lines across his smile as Levi's eyelashes flutter over his vision. "Slept well?"

"Was in the middle of a fantastic dream. You were wearing stockings." Erwin's gaze is pointed, trailing up the lines of Levi's bare legs, and Levi laughs it away with vague promises of maybes and laters that he only has half an intention to keep. Good dreams are difficult to come by, and slip out of the sieve of your fingers like water, and he half hopes Erwin will have forgotten by the time he comes home.

Kisses, bitter with the taste of lingering dreams, and Levi is pushing Erwin out of bed, with a reminder that he absolutely must go to work today, he has that important board meeting, remember? Erwin grumbles and says that of course he does, and Levi only admires the strong curve of Erwin's back for five seconds as his husband pads into the bathroom. 

A whimper from down the hall sends Levi flying into his closet to fling himself into a loose pair of sweats, hurrying into Eren's bedroom, a study in blues and greens and trains, where the five-year-old is already struggling awake, wriggling himself out of the nest of blankets his tossing limbs have built for himself over the night. 

Eren looks at him, turquoise eyes enchanting, catching and holding the early morning sunlight. 

"Papa." 

"Eren." 

Eren curls his hands into his fists, rubbing at his eyes as he yawns, pink, red, crimson rosebud mouth opening wide in a gush of air. 

"Your first day of kindergarten. Are you excited?" Levi asks, smiling as he crouches down to rummage through the mahogany dresser against the wall, pulling out impossibly tiny shirts and pants and socks for impossibly tiny limbs. 

"Nooooo," Eren replies, flopping back down into bed with a huff. Levi can hear the springs squeak even from here, and he has to wipe the smile from his face as he turns back to his son. "Don't wanna go." 

"You've got to, remember?" Levi extricates a reluctant Eren out of the tangle of blankets with the promises of cheese scrambled eggs. "You promised Papa you would." He helps Eren into his shirt and pants, the boy's fingers digging into his shoulder as he balances on one foot to let Levi tug one chubby leg into place. "And I'm sure you'll make plenty of friends." 

He herds Eren to the bathroom, onto his train-themed stepstool, only manages to wince twice as Eren brushes his teeth with vigor, splattering toothpaste foam all over the mirror. It swirls, mint green and cream, down the drain with a hiss, as Levi turns on the tap and wets the bristles of a comb to drag it through Eren's unruly hair. 

Erwin is already downstairs, 7:03 A.M., by the time Levi finally convinces Eren that it is far better for him to leave his toy train set at home. Strong coffee, dark roast dripping into a mug set beneath the Keurig's drip, and Levi inhales deeply, appreciation, as he sits Eren down at the table and opens the fridge for the eggs. erwin leans against the granite counter, sipping at a cup of coffee already, impeccable in shades of grey and slate that bring out his eyes, and Levi almost considers asking him to stay home. Almost, because the shirt draws tight across Erwin's shoulders; almost, because the knot of Erwin's silk tie looks luscious against his skin; almost, because he knows that he shouldn't, and so he holds his tongue. 

"Plans for today, Lee?" Erwin asks, setting his mug in the sink and turning on the tap to let it soak. The water gushes smooth and crystal into the porcelain. 

Levi shrugs as he cracks one egg, two, into a bowl, clear white and yellow yolk gleaming golden in the early morning sunlight. He punctures it with a fork, letting the colors leach together before whipping it together into a slurry. 

A pat of butter sizzles in the pan, golden bubbles, as he contemplates the hours ahead. 

"I don't know," he admits, softly. It will be the first day he has to himself in a long time, without Eren underfoot, without the pitter patter of tiny feet on the staircase, without the clanging of trains together on the coffee table, without the horrendous silence in the middle of playtime that indicates that something is probably broken. "I'll probably get around to reviewing that self-help book I've been meaning to read for a while." 

He slides the eggs, fluffy and yellow, onto a plate, and flicks the stove off. He stands on tiptoe for the salt and pepper, and while he is still squinting into the shadows of the cabinet to find the shakers, Erwin wraps an arm around him. Kisses to his neck. 

"Well, don't get too lonely." Erwin's voice wriggles its way into his ear, shivering up his spine. A promise. 

Levi is about to reply, when Eren taps against the table, impatient. "Papa, eggggs." 

The curve of Erwin's smile against the shell of his ear is infuriating as Erwin reaches up to pluck the salt from the farther recesses of the cabinet and sets it down next to Levi's hand, laughing at the flush that trickles its way across the planes of Levi's face. 

* * *

 

It begins like this, with Eren waving an excited goodbye at him from the backseat of Erwin's Toyota. It begins like this, catching the kiss Erwin blows through the windshield against his cheek. It begins like this, when Levi takes off his glasses to massage his aching ears, and puts them on to realize that the blurriness is still there. 


	2. Audacity

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Levi critiques books - all sorts - for a career. I'm unsure what the job title is. (Book critic??)

 

Man, weakness, loath to admit his own faults and failures, pinches at the bridge of his nose and rubs at his eyes with the heel of his hand, trying to shake the blurriness away. When it remains, his vision fuzzing just at the edges and anything he looks too closely at, he determines that perhaps he's more tired than usual this morning, more drained than he'd realized. The day stretches out long, looming, almost intimidating, ahead of him, and the house holds its breath, listening, the stage waiting and watching for the entrance of the actor. 

The freedom is almost suffocating, the quiet almost deafening. Levi wonders what Eren is doing at school, worrying, even as he chides himself for fretting. Six hours until he can go to pick him up, by which time his son will probably have chattered off the rest of his classmates' ears with his relentless babble about trains and locomotives and steam engines. 

Levi wonders if the fascination is indicative of how Eren is going to leave them, grown up, grown out, hanging off the wrought iron railing of a scarlet caboose to carry him far away, to college, to foreign countries, to new experiences, not all good, carried forward on his own two feet. Erwin is usually there to soothe away his fears with whispered, half-asleep words, usually there to tell him that he's being silly and nostalgic and that boys do not stay boys forever. Inexplicably, he feels like weeping, the silence too loud, too haunting, and he scolds himself for his weaknesses. 

The actor moves to the kitchen. Enter, stage right. 

He scrubs at the pan in the sink, soap bubbles frothing up around his wrists, rainbow and iridescent in the early morning light as he washes away the egg caked around the rim of the pan. Plate, fork, cup follow suit, into the dish drainer to drip dry in darkening spatters against the cotton towel underneath. Erwin's cup gleams porcelain in the corner of his vision, and he shouldn't, he shouldn't, but he reaches over to take a sip of the rapidly cooling coffee at the bottom of the mug, slotting his lips over the place where Erwin's had rested moments ago. A delayed kiss. He wonders if Erwin can feel the ghost of it against his mouth. The coffee is bitter - Erwin always takes it straight - shuddering straight through to his stomach, dark roast, and Levi grimaces as he pours the rest of it, mahogany, down the drain. 

* * *

 

He fills his hours with minutiae, keeping an eye on the time and ticking away each never-ending minute until he can start heading over to school to pick Eren up. The audience grows restless; one character makes a soliloquy, but two or three makes a scene, and Levi is all too aware of this as he tosses sheets that don't yet need to be washed into the laundry, adding capfuls of detergent and softener and listening to the whir of the machine just to break the inertia. The patterned trains on Eren's bedspread swirl vague in the suds and water, going around and around to a destination Levi hasn't the fortitude to imagine. 

He straightens out the bed, fitted sheets and comforter warm in his arms from the dryer, smoothing it with tender pats and plumping at pillows that will go flat the instant Eren flings himself onto the mattress, ready to dive into his dreams with enthusiasm, a childish abandon that Levi cherishes even as he tells Eren that he can only have one bedtime story. 

Perhaps two bedtime stories are in order for tonight, he thinks to himself as he resists the urge to go and straighten out Erwin's closet for the third time that morning. He wants to hold on to the memories for as long as he can. 

* * *

 

Levi sits down heavily on the sofa, cursing time for its slow, lumbering, unwieldy passage as he sets his cup of Earl grey tea down on the coffee table next to the thick manila envelope his editor had sent him the last week. He picked it up, measuring the comforting, solid weight of the hardbound book inside, sighing as he slotted a fingertip beneath the seal of masking tape and tearing the envelope open. The book spilled out onto the table, glossy cover a sailboat and gold letters in curling script, reassuringly thick and substantial in Levi's hands as he picked it up. 

"The Happiness Objective," it proclaimed. "Take back your life!" Levi took a sip of tea, bergamot and the softest, slightest hint of lemon against his tongue, holding it in his mouth to the point of bitterness. Slick swallows. 

He flipped the book open to the first page. 

"The first step to obtaining happiness is to realize that you are unhappy." 

Levi snorted, and took another sip of tea, making a mental note to tell his editor that he never wanted to critique another self-help book for the rest of his life.

Hours passed, slowly, steadily, surely, and the mug of tea emptied and refilled, the kettle whistling at sporadic intervals as the sunlight crept across the hardwood floors and Levi rolled about on the couch, shifting himself into steadier, more comfortable positions with every hour. 

He sighed, taking another fortifying sip of tea, and had the audacity to wish that the time would pass by faster. 

* * *

Eren comes barreling out of the kindergarten playground, hurling himself against Levi's leg and chattering ten thousand words a minute about all the things he did that day - saw a butterfly, chased it, saw another butterfly, made a friend - and Levi smiles in spite of himself, drinking in the welcome noise. His ring gleams golden on his hand as he combs Eren's atrociously messy hair back from his forehead.

"And what did Papa do today?" Eren asks, slotting a tiny hand into Levi's palm as they cross the street. The clouds blow puffy overhead on their azure canvas, the asphalt reflecting warm against Levi's face from its steady summertime soak. 

"I read a book," he replies, helping Eren up onto the curb of the sidewalk opposite. Eren jumps from cement square to cement square, his train-themed backpack joggling on his shoulders, the straps dancing, as he tries not to step on any of the cracks. Eren's shadow chases his own, and Levi tries to ignore the way Eren's features are blurred out from the corner of his eye. 

Tired, he thinks to himself. Too much tea, maybe? Getting old. New glasses. The number of reasons multiplies infinite in his mind, scrawling dark worries over his thoughts, and he blots them out hastily, listening to the cleansing sounds of Eren's babble. 

* * *

 

Act 2 finishes with the male lead finishing up a story - The Little Engine That Could, of course - and the supporting actor curled into the crook of his elbow, already lost in his dreams as Levi smoothed a palm over the last glossy page and flipped the book shut with a gentle whap. Eren had begged for two stories, and, as usual, hadn't made it through the first one. 

Levi leaned down to press a soft kiss to his forehead, baby smells, like milk and childhood dreams, before tiptoeing out of the room and clicking off the light. The glow in the dark stars he'd had Erwin paste on Eren's ceiling gleamed silvery gold, indistinct, as he exited, stage left. 

 


	3. Auteur

_ Now then. Take a deep breath. You've realized it, some sort of burning malaise in the pit of your heart that you've let fester there because you don't know any better and because nobody warned you not to play with matches. _

* * *

 

Levi looks through the screen of the video camera, holding his hand steady as Eren squeals at him to make sure he's capturing the whole thing. Erwin stands next to their son on top of the gentle grassy slope in the park, his shadow casting a long swathe of darkness over the grass, ready to catch Eren if he falls, if he topples over, already unsteady from where he balances on his bicycle, newly freed of training wheels just that morning.

"Watch me, Papa!" Eren's shout carries through the autumn air, crisp and cool and sneaking beneath the collar of Levi's sweater with brisk fingers to make him shiver. The leaves of the trees are already shedding, crimson and orange hands dancing down with every breath, and the sidewalks at the park are already covered with colorful carpets that crunch beneath their feet. 

"Yes, I'm watching," Levi calls back, checking the screen of the video camera one last time to make sure that it is indeed recording. He takes a deep breath, scented with the air of autumn, the rich scent of the earth reclaiming and absorbing its skyward tendrils, bundling itself in for the winter to come. "Go ahead, you can do it!" Encouragement, and even through the tiny screen of the camera he can see Eren's smile, the curve of a mandarin orange against rosy cheeks flushed with laughter. 

Oh, to be young again! The careless flirtations of youth, throwing caution to the winds,giddy and laughing because the world revolves around you and you have been made invincible, untouchable, cutting away your shadow to find that you have wings. 

Eren pushes off, rolling down the grassy slope, his laughter catching in the wind, and Levi finds himself biting back a smile. The dizzy ecstasy is contagious, catching, and he tries not to laugh, tries to steady his hand so he can capture every moment of Eren's flight, Erwin chasing after him, long legs easily keeping pace down the grassy slope. He holds his breath as Eren, intoxicated on his newfound speed, wobbles, falls into the grass heavily despite Erwin's reaching arms, waiting for the cry and wail of youth discovering that its wings are still weak and cannot carry them very far. 

Eren picks himself up after a moment - Levi can make out the scuff grass stains against the knees of his pants, ones he'll have to try and scrub out before throwing them in the laundry. He dusts himself off, the wheels of his tiny bicycle still spinning behind him, brushing off Erwin's hands, asking him if he is alright. 

The sun gleams off a twirling metal spoke, violently bright, shining into Levi's eyes, and he winces at the flash, bringing his hand up to dim the light. It remains ringing against his pupils for a breathless moment, two, three, before Eren refocuses into a little boy wearing a fleecy green jacket, reaching down to pick up his bike and marching it up to the top of the grassy slope, ready to try again. 

Growing up, growing out, growing away. Levi knows he's being dramatic, being nostalgic, but the long days while Eren is in school have started to grow on him, grating with their miserable ennui, until he's almost started to dread them. 

He wants to laugh at his foolishness from five years ago, thirty years old and still terribly unwise, still terribly young, waking up irritated in the middle of the night at the snuffles from the baby monitor before they get too loud, before they wake Erwin up. He had prayed then for a night of undisturbed sleep, for peace, for long stretching days of quiet to curl up on the sofa with a blanket and a book, aching to hear his thoughts again.

Now that he can, long afternoons reading and reviewing books, slitting open packages and slotting hardbound novels back into their manila envelopes with his review neatly typed on ivory card stock, he hates the sound of them. Boredom waxes heavy in his ears again, and Levi's started to take up new hobbies, anything to fill his hours in between the time Erwin and Eren leave in the morning, coffee kisses and sticky fingers grasping for the handle of his train lunchbox, and the time he can pick Eren up from school, sticky fingers holding tight onto his own. He's started a garden in the backyard, pressing snapdragon seeds into the soil from a purple packet, weeding and watering diligently and babying the tiny green shoots that have started to claw their way up from the dirt to kiss his fingertips with velvet newness. 

"Again, Papa!" Eren shouts from the top of the grassy slope, grass stained, and Levi calls back an acknowledgment, an encouragement, pushing up his glasses farther on the bridge of his nose as Eren pushes himself down the hill again. Erwin's shadow cuts long swathes through the grass, drying out and brittle green. Levi takes a moment to admire him, the video camera slipping slightly, jostling, as it captures Erwin's limbs, a man in flight, wisdom finding its wings have grown enough to fly. 

* * *

 

Eren drops off early that night, exhausted from his earlier efforts, comforted by the Finding Nemo ice packs Levi had held against his knees to alleviate the bruising. Satisfied his son is fast asleep in his dreams, Levi tiptoes out of the room to join Erwin in front of the television downstairs, buzzing with some commercial for Olive Garden. He hops neatly over the couch arm, wincing as the hardbound spine of the historical biography he'd been reading that week digs into his hip. He tugs it out from beneath him, places it on the coffee table with a solid thunk. 

Erwin's arm wraps around him, and he slots his way into the cradle of Erwin's body, taking a deep breath. It smells like soap, fresh linen, a soft spicy lingering note of the cologne Erwin dabs on early in the mornings. 

"How was your day, Lee? Have a good weekend?" This, despite the fact that the weekend has come and gone and they've spent it together forever. 

"It was good," Levi mumbles, lips fluttering soft against Erwin's pulse. Hannibal comes back on, and he ignores the soft white flashes of light at the peripherals of his vision. Was it? he wonders to himself, just half a thought almost drowned out by the dulcet tones of Mads Mikkelsen. It was, he reminds himself firmly as Erwin turns his face absentmindedly to feather a kiss against his hairline. He has no reason to believe otherwise, and he ignores the budging sense of malaise in the pit of his belly. 

* * *

 

_ Maybe you've lost someone. Maybe you've made a bad decision, or a series of them stringing one on top of another a necklace of regrets. Maybe you're bored. Take a moment to think about why exactly you're unhappy. _

 


	4. Auxiliary

_ "Have you got the reason ready? What's the matter? It's okay if you don't know yet. Unhappiness disguises itself in many different forms, and you've the rest of your life to figure it out. Obviously sooner is better than later, but once you've got a solid handle on it, come back and tell me. I promise I'll be here waiting." _

 

* * *

 

The soliloquy that the male lead gives at the beginning of Act 4 is purely shared between him and the audience; the other two supporting actors in this particular play have no idea of his feelings or his internal monologue; if they do, they choose not to mention it, and Levi is not sure which option he prefers more. 

Admittedly, he's bored. Admittedly, he's angry. Admittedly, he's trapped, in a situation of his own choosing, and he curses his past self for grievances and foolishnesses that he's let slide. 

The lighting shifts, the hot yellow stage lights dimming into soft honey milk, as if to signify the gravitas of the confession the male lead is about to make. Clouds sweep across the autumn sky, and the trees shake down the dresses of their leaves, dry rustles against the windowpanes that Levi rakes away into large drifts. Black trash bags dot the lawn, piled neatly by the porch and the sliding doors to the backyard for Erwin to haul to the sidewalk later for garbage collection. They'll most likely never make it there, because Eren always asks for just one bag to be opened, to jump in the leaves with little dry crackles of even littler feet, and one bag turns into two turns into ten until the yard is coated crimson and orange again. 

He'll grumble about it, but Erwin will cajole him into letting their son have five minutes that turns into ten into half an hour, until the sun sets crimson behind the hills to the horizon and Levi is running shampoo bubbles through Eren's chocolate hair, splashes and giggles and picking out bits of autumn leaf. 

But the house is quiet, Eren spirited safely away to kindergarten where he'll learn his numbers and his alphabet, how to write his name in sprawling, looping letters that take up half the page, macaroni art picture frames that Levi will coo at dutifully and store away in a safe place free from damp and insects, memories of a childhood slipping away like dreams through the loose sieve of wakefulness. Erwin is at work at Sina Technologies, director of marketing, filling his days with meetings and coffee breaks and surreptitious texts to Levi beneath the conference room table. 

Levi likes to imagine it's mahogany, shiny, maybe ringed with the outlines of several past mugs of coffee, and that his face glows an image into the underside of the table. 

He remembers his days working in an office, Rose Publications, coming home with ink-stained fingertips and smelling of newsprint, his back aching from hours bent over type, and Erwin would kiss away the words, melting him limp, licking up the syllables and the letters until Levi's tongue could only form the shape of Erwin's name.

He claims he doesn't miss it, but the audience knows better, with the omniscience of a class of well-studied observers riffling through the yellowing, dog-eared pages of a beloved play, penciling in every imagined nuance of every sentence. 

He had let the job go with the same ease that he'd accepted it, quick to assure Erwin that of course he would stay home with the new baby, that of course there was nothing he'd rather be doing. He had assured Erwin with kisses and caresses and breathless whispers in the middle of the night that everything would be perfect: he would review books from home, raising their family, and Erwin's career would take off, happiness, success, security, everything in spades. 

And everything had been perfect, for a little while, at least. 

But perfection has a funny way of quickly becoming imperfect, too much of a good thing, the peaks and valleys of emotion turning into mindless numbing plateaus. 

Dissatisfaction settled in now, a sort of growing resentment plucking its way through his heartstrings, and in his absentminded ennui and malaise, a plate slips from his hands, cracking against the stainless steel sink, ceramic shards in the sudsy water. 

Levi holds his breath, waiting for a retribution that doesn't come. The soap bubbles in the sink, fat and lemon-scented, gleam iridescent in the late morning light, shimmering rainbows to disguise the sharpness beneath the surface of the water. 

Levi thinks that he should have never read that stupid self-help book. 

"I'm ... unhappy?" The words come hesitant to his tongue, unnatural sounding, because he has no visible reason to be displeased. And yet, now that he's said it, it feels real, more tangible than it has any right to be, and Levi finds himself distinctly worried about what that means. He worries that the syllables will take root in the shadows of the cupboards, growing wild and rampant like kudzu, and he shakes his head, squeezing his eyes tightly together so that phosphenes dance behind his eyelids, and halfheartedly tries to convince himself that it isn't true. 

He busies himself with carefully picking out the ceramic shards from the bottom of the sink, plucking them out and carefully depositing them in the trash wrapped up in layers upon layers of swaddled paper towels. 

He's happy. He has every reason to be. 

* * *

 

Eren begs for Levi to read Peter Pan to him, the spine of the picture book cracked and creased, well-loved with how many times it's been tugged out and flung open on the carpet with delight, pretending to be Peter, the Lost Boys, Captain Hook. 

Lost? Yes. Levi feels that way. Auxiliary, secondary, unessential, as Eren smashes a rosy cheek against Levi's forearm and points at the large words, stuttering them out unsurely, with long, drawn-out pauses in between. The words dance in front of his eyes, seeing and not seeing, stricken with the burning knowledge of his distress, as Eren recites back the rest of the story from memory, not even attempting to read anymore, and tucks himself into bed. 

* * *

 

"Had a good day, Lee?" Erwin asks later that evening, as Levi slips into bed beside him. Erwin is still up, reading through some espionage novel or something of the sort, reading glasses perched on the edge of his nose. The sheets are crisp and cool against his bare skin, and he shivers out of habit as he tucks himself against the curls and ridges of Erwin's body. 

A hand comes down absentmindedly to stroke through his hair. 

"Yeah," he says after a moment, arching into the touch, strong fingers rubbing gently over his scalp. "Yeah." He repeats it again, firmer this time, as if saying it more will make it true, will extinguish the doubts growing terrifying and rabid in the crevices of his mind. "It was fine." 

 

* * *

 

_ "Just remember, though, promises are precious for the simple fact that they can be broken. Cherish them well." _

 


	5. Aumaga

_Sometimes it helps you to visualize your reasons for malaise. Write them down on a piece of paper, tap them out on a list on your mobile phone, and then crumple it up or swipe it away. But what if you want some sort of dramatic flare to accompany your newfound happiness?_

* * *

 

"Come on, Lee," Erwin all but whines, nudging at Levi's elbow and jostling the words in the biography he's reviewing. "You've been working all day and it's the start of the weekend." 

Levi rolls his eyes, bitterness tinging his words. "Yeah, I've been contributing a bundle to society." The sentence falls broken, sharp, jagged between them, and Levi is afraid to look at Erwin, afraid to see if the sheets have been rent apart by the force of his uncontained anguish. Contamination, ink swirling into milk and turning it obsidian, souring the flavor. Erwin notices, perceptive even in fatigue, and his forehead creases with worry that Levi's fingers itch to rub away. 

He sighs, snapping the book closed, the spine tight and glossy in his hand. The subject's face stares up at him, some doctor documenting his recent conversion to veganism, and he places it on the nightstand, top cover down. The thought of the doctor staring up through bespectacled eyes, his image examining the crown molding high up on the bedroom walls, has him shuddering for a reason he can't quite quantify. 

"Hey." Erwin's voice is quiet, traces of playfulness gone. Levi turns back around to find that Erwin is sitting up now, golden skin gleaming with scattered light. His gaze flickers over the dips and swoops of Erwin's collarbones, lingering at the dusky hollow of his throat where he knows the skin will be particularly soft and receptive to his kisses, where he knows the evidence of their romances can be hidden with a well-placed Windsor knot. He knows that if he were to lean over and take a taste, a soft kiss and feathering of lips against Erwin's pulse, that all would be forgiven. He can taste it already, like soap and water and a slight hint of salt. 

All would be forgotten. 

It is this thought that propels him forward, leaning heavy on the heel of his right hand towards Erwin, but he is stopped by the cradle of Erwin's palm against the curve of his cheek. 

"What's wrong?" The pad of Erwin's thumb swipes an arc over the plane of Levi's cheekbone, and he can just make out the tip of the digit out of the corner of his eye, blurred. Objects are closer than they appear, and Levi's attempt at obscurity has clearly gone noticed, and promptly overthrown. His thumb traces the swell of Levi's lower lip, ticklish at the fringes, and a jolt of arousal pools warm in the pit of his belly at the touch. "Did the dog die?" 

It takes a moment for Levi to place the joke, but when he does, he forces a smile onto his face and knocks Erwin's hand aside gently, feigned nonchalance. 

Pause. Cut. The theater director calls for the actors to stop, pinching at the bridge of his nose and trying to figure out how to turn the scene into polished perfection. The lighting is perfect, he's already decided, Levi's face half-shadowed, inky tendrils perfect against the gleam of Erwin's skin. The other supporting male lead is tucked perfect pretty into bed, the train covers drawn up to his chin, hopping his way into his third or fourth dream of the night already, limbs splayed out vigorous beneath the covers with the innocent abandon only small children possess. He examines the actors from all angles, tilting his head this way and that, running his fingers over his lips to imagine the reluctant eroticism of the pose. 

It alights on him during his third or fourth pass, his practiced eye roving over them frozen in position. Ah! Of course! He slaps his forehead and laughs. Foolish. 

Levi's trying to change the subject, and the director is well aware he's deviating from an already well-practiced script, but this just won't do. He whispers a stage direction into Erwin's ear, before tapping quickly off the stage. 

Action!

Erwin catches Levi's wrist in the circle of his palm, pressing kisses to the soft skin he finds at the inside of Levi's forearm. "Tell me what's on your mind, Lee, I beg you," he breathes, his lips feathering pleas against the skin, kisses to Levi's pulse as though he can taste his heartbeat. "You know you can tell me anything." 

Levi blinks. Surprise. This isn't how it's supposed to go. From this vantage point, he can see the slick part in Erwin's hair, brushed lazily with thick fingers after a shower, and he leans down to press an absentminded kiss to where the pink of his scalp gleams faintly in the low light, stalling for time. 

How can he explain it, this sudden realization of unhappiness that's just recently burnt a hole of doubt into the cloak of his soul? He has every reason to be happy, and yet, he's at the point where niggling doubts start to multiply in the quiet silences of the house that Erwin and Eren have left behind, rampant in their slipstreams. And yes, he can tell him anything, but Levi's slowly getting used to the solitary intimacy of preserving his feelings all to himself, and he isn't quite ready to shatter the illusion of privacy just yet. 

Erwin presses a kiss to Levi's palm, tongue flicking lightly over the lifelines as Levi's fingers dance cantatas over his face. Waiting. Patient, a priest with folded hands on the opposite side of the lattice of the confessional. 

"I'm...bored," Levi says, finally, and once the words are out he wants to retract them, punch out his tongue and swallow them up whole. But Erwin is already listening, something he's been irritatingly good at, and Levi curls his left hand into a fist in the sheets to stop himself from any further admittances to grievance. 

"Bored?" Erwin kisses along the ridges of his knuckles meditatively, tongue lapping softly at the fine webbings of skin between Levi's fingers. "I'm sorry, love. It must be lonely, here by yourself."

Yes. Loneliness. Erwin's hit the nail on the head yet again, and Levi wants to cry at how quickly Erwin can identify and know the taste of his soul. 

"It is," he admits, his words darting out quickly so that they won't tremble with the weight of his unshed tears. "I am." He threads his left hand through Erwin's hair, burnished gold to match the ring that loops round his finger. 

"Oh, sweetness," Erwin murmurs, rising up beneath his hand to press kisses against his mouth, slack, the frames of Levi's glasses bumping lightly against his cheekbone. "Oh, darling. I'm so, so sorry." 

With anyone else it would've sounded cheap, fragile apologies, but Levi can feel Erwin punctuating meaning into every syllable to repair the rents in the bedsheets between them, and he allows Erwin's kisses to pepper across his face, to catch his lips with the taste of mint and something inexplicably intoxicating that has him leaning forward for more. 

He allows himself to be rolled into the sheets, ears pricked still for the pitter patter of tiny feet from down the hallway on the hardwood. Erwin kisses the aches away, tongue sandpaper smooth against flesh that flushes rosy beneath his ministrations, and Levi props himself up on his elbows to watch burnished gold against his skin, honey melting into cream, tinges of sweetness. 

Erwin's eyes spark up electric blue as Levi reaches down to wind trembling fingers through his hair. Kisses against his stomach, where cream becomes speckled with pepper, wiry ebony hairs beginning their path to disappear beneath the elastic waistband of his boxers, have his pulse jumping; he's already stiffening, steel beneath the silk, and Erwin presses the heel of his hand lightly against the heat of cinders to stoke it into flames.

"Don't tug my hair, Levi." Wicked whispers, and Levi shudders at the intoned promises hiding faint behind the syllables. "Unless you want me to tie you up? Hmm?"

No. Levi shakes his head, twitches that have his glasses all but falling off, slipping down the bridge of his nose. He reaches up in irritation to tug the black frames off, taking a moment to massage at the aching shell of his left ear, before he places the frames on the nightstand on top of the book. When he turns back, Erwin is blurred, just the faintest smudge. 

"Nothing like that tonight," he murmurs, running hands through Erwin's hair again, cornsilk underneath the pads of his fingertips. "We're not young strapping twenty year olds anymore." 

Erwin hums, sucking kisses into his inner thighs, and Levi shudders, purple plum bruises. _Let me hold you_ , he wants to whisper. _Let me hold you and have you in all the ways I know how to._

Erwin seems to hear him - _you have me, sweetness_ - and as he stokes the flames into an inferno with patient caresses and generous kisses, he wraps his arms around Levi and whispers worship and praise and apologies into his ear to fill the aching emptiness inside him. For now, it is enough, and Levi savors the feeling of satiation. 

* * *

 

_You can burn it: light a match, hold it over your stove, and watch it crumble into ash. You can drown it, tossing it into a puddle or into your bathtub and watching the ink dissolve away. You can tear it up into a bunch of little pieces and let them blow away in the wind. Of course, you should take my advice with a grain of salt. Nothing in real life is this simple._

 


	6. Aubrieta

 

_ Now, you're unhappy, and that means you're well on your way to reaching your own personal nirvana again. Euphoria. It sounds pleasant, doesn't it? Even the word itself sounds effervescent, bubbling on your tongue like a flute of Veuve Clicquot sliding neatly down your throat. If I may be a bit presumptuous here, you're at that point in your life where you've probably had it before. Maybe at your wedding, a friend's baby shower, a well-to-do relative's son's university graduation. And, if none of these experiences is applicable to you, if you aren't acquainted with the flavor, just imagine the taste of elegance, coated in crystal and the inherent, opaque sadness that comes from knowing that even the sweetest decadences will come to an end, leaving the faint decaying memory of its opulence behind.  _

* * *

 

The snapdragons are sprouting in the rich patches of soil in the backyard, slender tendrils of green winding up through the loam. Levi nurtures them tenderly, patiently watering and weeding around the beds faithfully, streaks of dirt across his wrist and specks of soil clinging to his fingers. Levi waits eagerly for the day when the blossoms will dance in smart smatterings of crimson, warm scarlets peeking shyly through the cold fog of the approaching winter. 

"Papa!" Eren calls from the doorstep, bundled up, a puffy ice-blue marshmallow struggling to stuff his feet into his shoes. He waddles out, unwieldy from the extra down Erwin's wrapped him in, and Levi stifles a laugh in the curve of his hand. Erwin's determined to escape the flu this year, to dodge the runny noses and sore throats that usually accompany the autumn, as though he can tempt the hand of Fate and come out victorious. "Papa, whatcha doing?" 

Eren plops down next to him, bracing himself against Levi's hip, splaying tiny starfish hands out across the denim. Erwin comes out a few moments later, the glass sliding doors slipping open with a soft 'schicking' sound, and this time, Levi really can't help but laugh at how Erwin's wrapped up in a ski jacket and a scarf. 

"Papa is gardening," he informs Eren, accepting the North Face jacket that Erwin's brought out for him, despite the fact that it's a lovely autumn day without a hint of chill in the air. "Growing flowers." Erwin helps him into the jacket, and he obliges him, despite the fact that he's roasting already. He can't imagine how Erwin does it. 

"Fwowers," Eren repeats, leaning forward to tug at a pale green stem. Levi tugs him back by the hood of his jacket - fur-lined, of course! for extra heat retention. 

"You have to be careful with them," he murmurs, pressing a kiss to Eren's cheek, plump against his lips. "They're still growing, like you, so you have to make sure to be gentle with them and give them the foods they like to eat, and even sometimes the ones they don't like so they grow up healthy and strong." 

"Even bwockli?" Eren asks. Levi smiles indulgently, and pats away a smear of dirt on the heel of Eren's hand. 

"Yes, even broccoli," Erwin finishes for him, complete sentences scrolling between them like a typewriter running its onionskin ribbon neatly through the file. Erwin's hand covers his own, reassuring and firm, and Levi thinks that maybe for a moment, for a breath, for the space of a blink, they can afford to cheat fate. 

* * *

Intermission. The subtle transitioning from one act to another. The audience stands up, stretching their limbs and heading in neat organized droves to the bathrooms, to the concession stands to buy sugared almonds and claret goblets of wine to refresh themselves. Those that have already seen this particular play fluff their handkerchiefs in their shirt pockets, hoping that they will not need them this time, and envying the theatergoers who are still fresh-faced and milling about the lobby with stars in their eyes, the blissful ignorance of a crowd who still believes that destiny can be controlled. 

* * *

 

It happens later that night, after Eren has already been put to bed. Levi's indulged him in not one, not two, but three bedtime stories, letting Eren turn the thick cardboard pages and trace tiny fingers over all the images and all the colors. Levi reasons that small rewards are in order - an extra story for eating his broccoli, an extra bedtime kiss for not biting that child in his kindergarten class - what was his name? Jean? - again, an extra promise to go to the park, coerced out of Erwin, as a present for picking up all his toys until his room is in some semblance of cleanliness again. 

Levi sighs, the weight of Eren's head heavy and damp against his chest, tiny breaths and tiny heartbeats pulsing lightly to match his own. Eren is a blessing, a treasure, and Levi will never forget the moment he had burst into the hospital, breathless, apples in his cheeks, a huge bouquet of flowers swaddled in his arms for the birth mother. He had all but cried, swaying unsteady at the sight of the tiny blue bundle in the cradle next to the bed, and Erwin had wrapped his arms about him, warm on a chilly March morning, resting his chin on Levi's shoulder to look down into the bassinet and marvel at the sight of the future. It had milky eyes and tufts of chocolate hair, a tiny rosebud mouth pursing and relaxing in turns, and flushed cheeks like a china doll painted by Botticelli. 

He had hardly been able to believe Eren was theirs, that Eren was his to have and to love and to raise. 

He still finds it difficult to believe, even as he dislodges himself from underneath Eren's dead weight, his hand numb from lack of blood flow, and tiptoes out the bedroom door. He leaves it open a crack, so the soft glow of the hallway light falls across the bottom of Eren's face. He sleeps with his mouth open, the reckless abandon of a child who's waking and dreaming worlds are completely separate, and Levi smiles, blowing him a kiss from the doorway, hoping Eren can feel it through the veil of slumber. 

He turns, the light glancing off the lenses of his glasses just the right way so that he's left blinded for a moment, the phosphenes glistening and dangling like will o' the wisps over the glassy surfaces of his eyes. 

And, perplexed, the fabric rips away, tearing his vision apart and rendering it blurry through a sheet of silk. Levi blinks, once, twice, roughly, taking off his glasses and rubbing at his eyes with the heels of his hands, in the hopes of refocusing and refinding himself, to no avail. He swallows, closing his eyes tightly and welcoming the clarity of the darkness, hoping against hope - and here the audience holds its collective breath, waiting for the rise of the curtains once again, filing into their seats patiently - that when he opens them again, the world will have resolved back into itself once more. 

The curtain lifts. The audience is greeted with a film of gossamer gauze, the lights lifting until the characters on stage gleam boundless limbs, their shadows stretching out all the way to infinity.

"Levi? Are you alright?" 

Levi's eyes skitter frantically to where Erwin's standing at their bedroom door, a blur, a study in muted greys, the hallway light catching his hair and threading it through with golden smears. His face is indistinct, and this, more than anything, has Levi falling to his knees, wrapping his arms tightly around each other to keep himself from shaking apart. 

Erwin is there in an instant, their shadows puddling together on the floor into a pool of shallow darkness, and Levi scrabbles for his face to cradle it in the palms of his hands, solidity and warmth and the already scratchy growth of golden stubble against his skin. Up close, eyelashes batting against Erwin's jaw, he can just almost make out the worried curve of his mouth. 

* * *

 

_ You may be asking me: why did I say you'd tasted it before? Well, I might be wrong. I've been wrong many times before, and am sure to be wrong for many times to come. But, I presume if you've read this far, you're in the aching throes of some sort of crisis. You'd have put the book down a long time ago if you hadn't found something that made you sit up and pay attention.  _

_ Now then. Let's talk about happiness. _

 


	7. Aurum

_Happiness. Curse the rigidity of language, because it seems impossible that nine letters, three syllables can fully envelop such a concept. You can’t see it, you can’t taste it, you can’t hold it in your hands. So does it really exist?_

* * *

 

Levi focuses on the firm grasp of Erwin’s palm, his hand resting heavy in Levi’s lap, squeezing comfort into Levi’s fingers as Erwin drives them to the hospital. Eren whines, complains in the back seat about being woken up, cranky as only children can be in the face of catastrophe. Levi’s heart beats a furious, fervent staccato in his chest, the streetlamps casting blurred slanting slurs of orange as they flicker past, taunting beacons in the darkness.

“Does it hurt?” Erwin keeps repeating. Levi can hear the strain in his voice, catching tight at the back of his throat, and he tugs his attention away from the flickering gleam of the streetlamps to look across the space between their seats. Erwin is swathed in pale grey cotton, an old T-shirt that Levi knows is soft from several trips through the laundry, “Are you feeling okay?”

“I’m fine,” he repeats, eyes wide and unblinking as he strains to solidify Erwin into focus, as though his will and resolve alone can repair whatever has gone wrong in the infinitesimal space of time between tucking Eren into bed and spotting Erwin in the upstairs hallway. It’s true, really; the initial sensation had been oddly gratifying, relieving, almost, a pressure lifting and slicing apart to drop a skein of silk across his vision. And now, strengthened with several repetitions and the awestruck wonder of someone seeing the world for the first time, Levi’s words grow stronger, each syllable laden with conviction.

It doesn’t hurt, really, it doesn’t, and everything would have been normal, save for the way that the late-night chill eats through his pajamas, the strain of stress drawing the cotton of Erwin’s shirt tight across his shoulders, and Eren’s soft whimpering in his car seat. The car rumbles and bumps over the asphalt, air whistling through a window that’s not quite closed in the back. He looks down into his lap, the tangled mess of their hands, a glimmer of metal peeking out in from the interstitial spaces between their laced fingers.

* * *

 

The white fluorescence in the emergency waiting room grates on Levi’s eyes, irritating and much too bright. He swears he can taste disinfectant, scented heavy in the air, the smell of sickness, and it rests stinging and cloying against his tongue. Eren clings to his leg, tiny fingers digging into his thigh and grounding him to the present. His hand is a blob against the dark grey of Levi’s sweats, tugging the fabric into creases where deeper shadows gather.

Time condenses to a pinpoint, the minutes marked off with the coughs of the baby across the room, a blur of a bundle in its faceless mother’s arms, and the scratching of the pen in Erwin’s hand, scrawling across the medical form the nurse had pushed across the speckled counter to them. When Levi glances over, he can only make out a slurry of dark ink dancing in wavy lines across the paper, Erwin’s handwriting in bright blue looped in the blank spaces between.

Erwin’s relaxed, somewhat, his thigh no longer quite as tense beneath Levi’s left hand, his wedding ring gleaming gold beneath the lights.

“D’you smoke?” he asks, and Levi can hear the tiny tight attempt at a joke, a rhetorical questioning from someone who already knows him inside and out. Humor, a sense of worried relief that Levi isn’t in pain, combined with the spilling anxiety of facing a danger he can’t see.

“Of course not,” Levi replies, allowing a small smile to creep across his lips. Erwin slashes a big mark on the paper.

“Drugs?”

“None.”

“Problems sleeping?”

“Nope.”

“Sexually active?”

Levi laughs out loud, and Eren joins him after a moment, his little voice a cacophony to drown out the buzz of the fluorescent lights.

“Horrifyingly so,” he replies, and he leans over to press a sloppy kiss to the underside of Erwin’s jaw, already itchy with stubble against his lips.

Erwin smiles; Levi can feel the upwards quirk of his cheek beneath his mouth. This reassurance is almost enough to make him forget their surroundings, forget the smell of antiseptic stinging in his nostrils, forget the way the baby has started to wail across the room, a thin piercing sound that bores into his head.

Erwin stands up, and Levi’s fingers follow, clinging to his wrist and finding solace in the fine golden hairs that fur his skin.

“I’m just going to give them your chart, sweetheart,” Erwin murmurs, letting Levi’s touch linger anyway. “Sooner we’re in, sooner we’re out, right?”

Levi watches through squinted eyes as his husband’s silhouette traipses across the room, a sickly grey and tan underneath the buzzing lights. Eren’s head presses into his thigh, a soft wetness from an open mouth pressed slack against the cotton. Children can sleep anywhere, and Levi threads his fingers absentmindedly through Eren’s hair, soft and fluffy with sleep and generous shampooing. It’s silky against his touch.

* * *

 

What feels like hours pass before Levi is led into a room, clinging tight to Erwin’s free arm, the one that isn’t carrying Eren, a limp damp weight of child, halfway through his fourth or fifth dream already, and Levi prays that the groans and shrieks of the mortally wounded and ill do not scent his son’s slumber with terror.

The doctor, a shadow of a man wrapped in the purest white, shines a bright light into his eyes, bright enough to hurt, and he squints against it before the doctor tuts in impatience and tells him to open his eyes wider. He pokes and prods, lights flashing across Levi’s limited field of vision, before clearing his throat and saying that he’ll be back in a few moments after he’s consulted with a fellow doctor.

The paper crinkles thin underneath Levi’s hands as he shifts on the padded bench. It’s rough and coarse against his palms, and his eyes are aching, dry and sore, fatigue sweeping silky fingers across his mind. He wants to lie down, wants to sleep, wants to wake up seeing Erwin’s eyebrows knotted in a furrow of worry and asking him if he’s alright, he’s had a rather bad nightmare again.

“And how are you doing?” he asks, turning in Erwin’s general direction by the door, where he’s sitting in a plastic chair with Eren held tightly against his chest. It’s a thinly veiled attempt at a joke, trying to clear the air, and he thinks Erwin smiles.

“Could be better,” Erwin admits, and Levi is relieved to hear gentle nuances of reassurance threaded through Erwin’s voice. “I’ll be better when you’re well, though.”

The doctor pushes back in, accompanied with another man wrapped in white, striding briskly towards him and shining lights into his eyes again to make phosphenes dance across his vision in an electric array of colors.

It’s almost beautiful, Levi decides, and, lost in the dancing hues, almost misses the part where one of the doctors shakes his head and informs him that there's a serious problem, but maybe they can fix it.

* * *

 

_The solution to the question above? Maybe. Only you can determine that for yourself. Let me know how it goes, because I’m still searching for the answer._


	8. Autocrat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I always fall in love with an open door.

_Sometimes it takes a bit of a change, don’t you think? Our daily activities get so bogged down with the minutiae that we never take the time to cherish how the little actions, the little minutes, can each be beautiful in their own right. When was the last time you told your significant other you loved them? When was the last time you spent long lazy days together watching the clouds trawl fat-bellied across the sky? When was the last time you reveled in the sheer joy of being yourself?_

* * *

 

Retinal detachment, the doctor says, a blur of words that Levi almost misses in how quickly they pass, in through one ear and out the other. The syllables get lost in the soft cadenzas of Eren’s breathing, inhale, exhale, inhale, the soft flurries of breath tangible beneath the weight of Levi’s palm, comforting and steady, a false bravery garnered from the knowledge that the storm has broken and is beating down on the bows, helplessly, devastatingly, overwhelmingly. A piece of yourself has ripped itself away from other pieces of yourself, frantic in its escape and shading your world in a smear of color. It’s not horrifyingly uncommon, especially for people with myopia, and the weight of Levi’s glasses, rendered useless now, sits heavy on his ears in a way that they haven’t in weeks. The weight of his imperfection is staggering, his fingers curling into taut, tight, white-knuckled fists, bunching up the pilled fabric of his grey sweats as the words float in and out of his head, taking form in staccato pauses and the half-measures of breath that precede bad news.

“Genetic factors might have influenced the composition of your vitreous humors…”

Humors? No, there’s nothing about this that Levi finds particularly funny, and as for genetics, he’s torn between feeling glad that his mother didn’t live long enough to go through this and terrified at the thought that he might still, at thirty-five, be selfish enough to want her with him despite everything, holding his hand while he sits on the crinkly paper of the examination room bench and examines the way the shadows in the hollows of his knuckles shift with every minute twitch. His father? A shadow even in his memory, a retreating back cloaked in dark blue cotton stretched tight over a pair of broad shoulders that looked defeated, weighed down with expectations of something he’d been denied, and Levi’s never missed him because how can you miss something you’ve never known?

“Laser surgery,” the doctor informs him, to weld back the renegade bits of himself into the whole again, the machine assembling the man back into his former glory, laughing all the while because the cracks of the imperfections will still be rooted deep in his memory, the few moments of blinding gossamer shading his vision away. “But if you’re not comfortable with the idea, we’ll have to do a further examination of the damage in order to determine what alternative treatments we have for our disposal.”

Levi’s lips purse in distaste, chapped skin flecking against chapped skin.

“A two week recovery period under careful observation, if you go the LASIK route,” the doctor concludes, almost triumphantly, and Levi wants to melt away at the thought. Two weeks in a hospital, two weeks hooked up to machines to monitor his heart rate, poked and prodded and examined vigorously at all hours of the day and night, a rat in a cage. Erwin would visit, sitting to the side with bouquets of lilies that they couldn’t afford scenting the room with cloying, sticky sweetness that would remind Levi far too much of his mother’s funeral, head bowed and staring glossy at the palms of his hands and wondering what on earth he was supposed to do now. Two weeks in a hospital, two weeks lying in an uncomfortable cot and staring at television programs the only demarcation of time, spooning mush into his mouth and wondering if Eren had had a good day at kindergarten. Two weeks in a hospital, money spiraling down the drain, and Levi can’t handle the thought of that more than anything else.

“No,” he says, quietly, firmly, the single syllable falling flat to the tiled floor of the examination room. The fluorescent lights buzz overhead, and he hears Erwin gasp, a sharp sound that has him wincing all over again.

“What did you say?” He sounds almost angry. No. Scratch that. He definitely sounds angry, and Levi doesn’t need to see clearly to know that Erwin’s eyebrows are knit together in confusion, in exasperation, in a fury at his stubborn resistance.

“No,” he repeats again, louder this time, loud enough so that Eren’s breath stutters, a tiny little hiccup that gives him strength to continue. The tension in the room is palpable. Levi can feel it choking the life out of him, and he asks the doctor, voice low, syllables lower, if he can have a bit of time to think over his options.

The doctor tuts, clearly unimpressed, and informs him that a quick decision is imperative for maximum vision restoration, but he bows out of the room all the same, the door closing with a gentle click that feels like it can shatter glass.

To his credit, Erwin waits until the doctor is out of the room. To his credit, Erwin adjusts Eren’s head and sleeping limbs carefully, the rough tenderness only a father can have, before hoisting himself out of the bank of small plastic chairs to the side and heading over to Levi. His footfalls sound like gunshots, and his silhouette blocks out the bright intensity of the lights overhead. He looks too big, too powerful, too invincible to be here, and Levi is almost ashamed. To his credit, Erwin doesn’t curse. He doesn’t shout, he doesn’t scream, he doesn’t yell obscenities, and for that Levi has always been grateful.

“What the hell are you thinking, Lee?” Erwin asks, his hands reaching up to cradle Levi’s face, thumbs brushing along the ridges of Levi’s collarbones, smooth swift strokes like they’re gathering tears. “You have to do it. Please.” Erwin presses his forehead against Levi’s, blonde swirling into black, and like this, Levi can almost make out the downturned curve of Erwin’s mouth. “Please, Levi. Why are you hesitating?”

It sounds tempting, full restoration like the doctor had halfheartedly promised from the corner of his mouth, but Levi can’t operate in half promises and broken truths. He whispers just as much, the uncertainties taking hold of his voice and strangling his words until he really is crying salty kisses against the pads of Erwin’s thumbs.

“Just give me time to think it over some more,” he whispers, begging, pleading, tasting the salt flickers of his weaknesses against Erwin’s mouth. In some far placed corner of his mind, the man marvels at how, broken though he is, he still has the power to bring God to his knees.

* * *

 

_A change. The word sounds scary, I know. But courage is only seven letters. And I know you’ve been brave before. Something, someone in your life has asked that of you, and you rose to the occasion, champing at the bit. All you need to do is recapture that and you’ll be all but set._


	9. Audio

_Decisions, decisions, darling. Of course you’re influenced by what others want. Of course you want to make others happy. But at what cost?_

* * *

 

The drive home was silent, the air between them coated heavy with Erwin’s anger, so thick that Levi was surprised Eren in the backseat could still sleep without choking on the tension that stretched taut from the driver to the passenger’s seat. The streetlights flicked by outside the window, punctuating the darkness of the night with orange, and Levi was almost glad for the way his vision came in smears and blurs so that he couldn’t make out anything past the tight set of Erwin’s jawline and the rigid stretch of his arm, his hand clamped around the steering wheel.

The doctors had let them go reluctantly, grudgingly admitting that it certainly wasn’t a problem if Levi wanted to be discharged, just as long as he wasn’t in the habit of driving or operating heavy machinery on a day to day basis. Some mutterings about health insurance, and Levi had been pushed down into a wheelchair by a medical intern in powder blue scrubs, who wheeled him vigorously to the front of the clinic and put the brakes on while Erwin carried Eren to the car and drove it around to the entrance. “Just so you don’t sue us, if you trip and fall and hurt yourself on your way out, you understand how it is,” the intern had gabbled, too many words without too many meanings, and Levi had nodded absentmindedly, tracing the bright cherry red of the car’s taillights as Erwin reversed it out of the haphazard parking job he’d done and drove it around to the curb. The intern had taken hold of his upper arm, helping him out of the wheelchair and into the passenger’s seat, buckling the seat belt around him and tugging on it to make sure it was secure. Levi had felt like a doll, limbs readjusted and pressed into position, nervous and nerveless. Something to be seen, and nothing to see.

And now Erwin isn’t talking to him. The silence is fraught with a sort of desperate anger that Levi can’t remember having felt before, the words all struggling to spill out and coming up distraught against the dam of his own stubbornness and the granite of Erwin’s conviction.

“You’re a fool, Lee,” Erwin hisses, almost bitter like he wants to bite back the words the instant they’re out between them. Levi closes his eyes, pressing his head back against the car’s headrest and thanking whatever divine beings exist that Eren is still snoring vigorously in the backseat. Tiny dreams, tiny prayers answered. He ignores the way his breath catches ragged in his throat, ignores the way he can start to taste salt at the back of his tongue, ignores the way that when he opens his eyes again, he’s blinking more than normal, blinking rough and violent and controlled and trying to ignore the way the world swims with a new layer of gloss.

“I can’t put you through it,” Levi whispers, paused at a stoplight. Suspended animation. He wonders what the next lines are, thoroughly unprepared for the wrench thrown into the clockwork of their routine. “I can’t – we can’t – “

“Can’t what?” Erwin’s voice is choked, and Levi vaguely notices the light turning green, a smear of neon in the corner of his vision. The car remains stationary behind the white line, and the light hesitates, flickers, changing back to yellow and then to red. “What can’t you do, Levi? What can’t we do?” Erwin sounds desperate, his hand reaching across the divide, an olive branch, a gesture of peace, a lifesaver, and Levi fumbles for a bit before latching on to it, clinging tightly to Erwin’s fingers, clasping tight to remind himself that he is not alone.

“You heard what the doctors said,” he murmurs, pressing his thumbs into Erwin’s palm, a gentle massage that comes to him naturally from many nights absentmindedly sprawled out on the couch watching reruns of detergent commercials, working out the cramps in Erwin’s hands from hours spent hunched over a desk, a pen clamped firmly between his fingers. “It’s not life threatening. I don’t need to have the surgery.”

“Are you scared?” Erwin wants to know. Levi presses the pad of a thumb into the rough callous at the base of Erwin’s middle finger. “They said the surgery was highly effective, 90% success rate, nothing to be afraid of, and I’ll be with you the whole time.” Erwin’s babbling now, the light flickering green yellow red green yellow red to shade his skin. Too many words, wasted without meaning.

“We can’t, Erwin,” he says, firmly now, trying to ignore the way Erwin’s hand tenses in his grip. The olive branch stiffens, thinking about withdrawal, and Levi clings to it fervently, praying that he will not be left to drown quite yet. “We can’t afford this.”

Erwin nearly explodes, his hand curling into a fist in Levi’s lap when he wrenches it away, a live grenade. A curl of guilt licks its way into the pit of Levi’s belly, and he almost wishes for Erwin to yell at him, for Erwin to hit him, for Erwin to do something other than sit there in stony silence, the air thick with anger and shaded with the changing of the traffic lights. He can’t bear it, the quiet threatening to deafen him, and, his turn to fill the atmosphere with meaningless noise, Levi surprises himself by beginning to cry.

He’s but a man, tears splotching the Cupid’s bow of his lips with salt that he licks away frantically, as though he can rub away all trace of his weakness though the back of Erwin’s hand is already wet to the touch. His breath runs ragged in his lungs, and, like the cooling rain after long dusty summer heat, it washes away the animosity.

“Oh, God, Lee,” Erwin whispers, shifting the car into park, clicking off the headlights, and leaning over the divide to pull him into an awkward hug, limbs restrained by the confines of their seat belts, the safety devices intended to keep them safe from eventualities. “No, don’t cry, love, hush now, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” Apologies, repeated threefold, as though Levi had doubted their sincerity. “We’ll figure something out, loans and medical insurance and something like that.”

Levi stiffens beneath Erwin’s embrace, stiffens under the onslaught of the words. No, it’s not supposed to be like this, numbers and figures and the crippling thought of taking on so much more than they can afford, checkbooks and bank accounts overdrawn. And there is Eren, a sleeping bundle of potential in the back seat, hopes and dreams and an entire life ahead of him, and Levi cannot possibly rationalize the expenses, not when he can still make out the soft throb of Erwin’s pulse beating fervently in his neck, shaded green yellow red green yellow red.

“We’ll figure something out,” Erwin is repeating now, more to assure himself than to convince Levi, certain as always that Levi has already been won over, this foolish bout with illusions of self-grandeur in martyrdom ended. “Promise, sweetheart.”

Levi sighs, presses a clumsy kiss to the tiny throb of Erwin’s pulse. Tired, so tired, eyes red and weepy, and Erwin pulls back, resettling himself into his seat and shifting the car back into Drive. Levi leans his head back against the headrest, closing his eyes, and allows the soft motion of the car on the smooth asphalt to rock him into dreams.

He wakes up what seems like mere heartbeats later, the car pulling into a stop in their driveway, the porch light by the front door still on with its automatic timer Levi had set up months ago. He fumbled to unbuckle himself as Erwin unlocked the car doors, stepped cautiously out onto the pavement of the driveway with his fingertips still splayed out against the smooth metal of the car to ground himself while Erwin unbuckles Eren from the myriad straps of his car seat, the soft whimpers and squalls of a child being roused roughly from his dreams. Erwin hoists Eren into his arms with soft, soothing words, herding Levi to the front door with a hand wrapped firmly around his upper arm.

 _No, it is far too much_ , Levi thinks to himself as he counts the number of steps from the front door to the stairs, up the stairs, down the hallway into bed. 142. He commits the number to memory.  _No, it is far too much to ask,_ he decides, definitive, as he slips himself into bed, rolling over into the sleep-softened circle of Erwin’s embrace, trying to convince himself that he is doing the right thing.

* * *

 

_Put yourself first for once. Say you'll do what's best for you, and mean it. It's hard, I know, peeling your wallflower self away from the soft backdrop of compassion and selflessness you've pasted yourself to. But how can you make others happy if you don't know the first thing about yourself?_

 


	10. Aucuba

_Resilience is always something I’ve admired, the green sprout of a plant sticking up through the sidewalk cracks, the persistent patterns of migrating birds flocking in Vs overhead in faithful falls. You can learn to be resilient, too, because it gets better. I know it seems rough to believe it now, and it might take ages. Is it worth the wait? you ask yourself, standing by the kitchen window with a lit cigarette dangling from your lips so you can feel the heat warming you from the inside out. Can I wait that long?_

* * *

 

Levi wakes up the next morning to find that his vision is still shot through with blurriness, and the weight of his crystal clear dreams slams into his soul with terrifying compunction. The sheets are still warm next to him when he reaches a hand out to touch the rumpled cotton, and he can hear Erwin banging around pots and pans in the kitchen. Still here.

He rolls over to squint at the clock, which glares at him in a smear of cherry red, and Levi leans closer, closer, closer still, until the tip of his nose is all but pressing against the plastic display. 8:31 AM. He’s overslept. He’s never done that before, one never in a line spiraling out ahead and in front of him, but he’s lost his way.

Eren squeals something unintelligible, and Levi sits up, propping himself on a forearm. No, no, no, he thinks to himself, that can’t be right, it’s a weekday and Eren should be at school, playing with blocks and learning to count higher than the number of his fingers. Eren squeals again, something about pancakes if Levi’s hearing correctly, and it’s just one more strangeness in a day full of strangenesses.

Erwin brings him breakfast in bed, something reserved for birthdays and particularly special occasions, and Levi tries not to quiver under the weight of Erwin’s gaze as he misjudges the distance from his hand to the fork, fingers grasping at air.

“What’s wrong with Papa?” Eren asks, a blur of blue and brown as he clambers up on the bed next to Levi, tiny starfish hands patting at his arm to take away imagined hurts that bubble beneath the surface, imagined defects that one doesn’t notice until it starts to rain and water leaks through all the cracks. The clouds are gathering, and Levi tries to brace himself for the storm of Erwin’s confused anger. “Does Papa have an owie?”

He can barely bring himself to swallow around the mouthful of pancake, lying heavy and syrup soggy against his tongue. The flavors seem too sweet, altogether too much, and he swallows more out of a duty to fill the emptiness inside him.

“He does.” He can’t see Erwin’s expression, and he’s thankful for it, because Erwin’s voice is strangled and choked off with disbelief. Levi takes a sip of coffee that burns his tongue, welcoming the scald, and wonders if he’ll ever be strong enough to accept the fact that he might never again see the nuances of Erwin’s emotions flitting over the planes of his face.

And, despite his misgivings, Levi wants to be selfish. He wants to be made whole again. But Eren’s tiny fingers are patting at his cheek in some lost gesture of consolation, and he forces himself to take another bite of pancake, smudged wedges of beige and brown on the plate, because he doesn’t trust his voice to stay steady, doesn’t trust himself to stay steady in his convictions.

“You should be at school,” he manages, finally. “Didn’t you want to go today?”

“Daddy said I could stay home and take care of Papa,” Eren declares, decisively, and Levi bites at the inside of his cheek, tears threatening to smudge his sight even further. Funny, how they come so easily now, and Levi wonders if he’s been saving them up, sad movies and sad moments from the past coalescing into the tragedy of now. “So you have to get better soon! Because Jean’s pwobably playing with Mikasa, and I wike her too.”

“Of course,” Levi mumbles through a leaden tongue, staring at where Erwin’s hand rests heavy on the coverlet. It isn’t supposed to be this way, a vicious glimpse into his future long before he’s ready to accept it. “I’ll get better soon.” Erwin’s hand twitches, shadows dancing on the cotton, and Levi wants to bite back his words. Compassion is a cruel mistress, and false hope is so much more bitter when tempered with selfishness.

Levi is only human. And he wants with a desperation that frightens him.

* * *

 

Erwin’s parked Eren in front of the TV with a juice box and a DVD of Finding Nemo, a concession for special occasions and particularly rainy days. A book rests in Levi’s lap, his fingertips curled gently underneath the glossy cover, and he’s long ago given up trying to squint at the lines and the words, which squiggle away in messes of dark ink whenever he tries to pin them down. The images on the flickering television screen are no better, bright pastels and disembodied voices, but Eren’s bright laughter can almost drown out the voices of Levi’s doubting demons.

“What are we going to do, Lee?” Erwin asks, quietly, from the other end of the couch, where Levi’s feet are curled in his lap. “You heard what the doctors said.” His grim tone weaves through the cheerfulness of Ellen DeGeneres singing some perky, upbeat tune. Eren seems not to notice, and Levi ruffles a hand gratefully through his son’s silky hair. Adulthood comes far too quickly, and if Levi had had his way, he’d have Eren be a child forever, full of imagination and fantastical dreams that were improbable but not impossible.

“Time’s of the essence.” Erwin’s voice has taken on a tone of urgency, his fingers dropping to Levi’s ankle and kneading it worriedly between his hands.

And, oh forgive him, he knows it’s cowardly, with Eren right beside him. But he isn’t ready for the pinpricks of Erwin’s words, isn’t prepared enough for the storm of argument. He isn’t ready to be an adult, not like this, not nearly like this.

“No,” he murmurs, quiet. Erwin’s fingers stiffen against the arch of his foot. “No,” he repeats, with more emphasis. “Hear me out,” he demands, when Erwin’s thighs tense beneath his heels, ready to get up.

“This isn’t the place,” Erwin grits out, but Eren’s laughing gleefully at the animated fish’s antics, and isn’t paying attention, or so Levi prays.

“We” – and Levi is careful to say ‘we,’ as though he can possibly blunt the arrow tips of confession – “cannot afford it.” Erwin’s fingers tighten around his skin, almost painful, almost accusatory, but the words lie between them like swords, and Levi cannot let them rest for fear of the pain sinking untended. “Do you know how much it would cost? Thousands. Tens of thousands, Erwin.”

When Erwin speaks, it’s through gritted teeth. Levi can hear it in his voice, wounded pride and even more wounded love. “I’ll work more,” he promises. “I’ll work harder. I can’t – we can’t –“

“Don’t,” Levi murmurs, leaning forward now to place a hand against Erwin’s arm, fingertips against tense muscle. “You work enough. Eren needs two parents, not one and a half. You promised, Erwin. You promised.”

Erwin’s fingers curl into a fist in his lap, knuckles tight against the arch of Levi’s left foot, and he can count the ridges, one, two, three, four, against his skin. Eren, who’s perked up at being mentioned, settles back into the cushions, childlike ears unaware of the piercing silence that only adults can hear, fraught with worries and laden with words that speak of shattered illusion and dreams broken with the weights of reality.

“Do you always have to be such a – such a fucking martyr?” Erwin hisses lowly from beneath clenched teeth, and Erwin doesn’t need perfect vision to know that Erwin’s eyebrows are knotted tight together, to know that wrinkles have appeared on the smooth skin of his forehead. Levi winces at the vitriol in his voice, swords finding their mark in the chinks in his armor. “I’ll give up my job,” Erwin mimics, and Levi marvels at his cruelty. “I’ll give up my sight, oh, don’t worry about me, it’ll all be fine. It’ll all be fucking fine. It’s not fine, Levi.”

Marlin babbles on on the television screen. Eren’s laughs punctuate the silence, and not for the first time, Levi wonders if he’s making a mistake.

“Well, if you want to be blind for the rest of your life, if you never want to see Eren smiling at graduation or at his wedding, then be my bloody guest.” Erwin stands up, all but pushing Levi’s feet aside.

Swords are double-edged, and Erwin’s always been a natural at wielding them, painting the sharpness with venom that wriggles deep beneath his skin.

* * *

 

They sleep back to back that night, the inches of mattress between them turning into miles, and Levi longs for the naivete of childhood, the belief that he could fly.

 

* * *

 

_The answer? Yes. Yes, you can. Bend, don’t break. It might take weeks. It might take months. It might take years. But storms tend to pass once they’ve blown themselves out, and the flame of the cigarettes don’t last forever._


	11. Autumn

_Sometimes you’ll get tired of trying. Sometimes you’ll want to give up, to let yourself shatter. I get it. See these cracks? I have them, too._

 

* * *

 

The days pass, slowly melt into weeks, and normalcy begins to leach back in through the cracks. The world keeps turning, time keeps marching forward relentlessly, and Levi takes small comforts in the knowledge that this, too, will come to pass. The fractures heal awkwardly, but heal nonetheless, and Erwin’s words take on a quality of tired disapproval. Levi can handle that, and he soothes his wounded soul with the way Erwin’s sleeping body starts to reach over into his side of the bed again, secure embraces that have him marveling at how their hearts can manage to beat at the same pace.

Levi’s always been a quick learner, and now is no different. He’s memorized the number of steps it takes him to get from their bedroom to Eren’s, has learned to piece together full images from the smears of color that streak across his vision until he finds himself able to reconcile a blur of red with the bottle of laundry detergent on the second shelf in the laundry room, until he finds himself able to distinguish apples from pears in the fruit bowl by their weight and how they feel in the palm of his hand. He’s learning, one hand trailing fingertips along the wall, moving through the house he’s known so well and finding it different altogether.

But for every flickering gleam of brightness there comes a shadow to cast behind all the objects in its way, and the darkness creeps in on a sunny Tuesday morning. The kitchen windows are open to let in the first tastes of fall, the crisp and brisk scents of winter fronts ushering in the coolness, and Levi’s standing at the tile counters, making Eren’s lunch. It’s a ham and cheese sandwich, today, the crusts cut off and the sandwich cut into four neat triangles that Eren likes because he can wrap his tiny hands around them.

“Hey, Lee.” Erwin calls to him from the kitchen table, where he’s alternating spooning oatmeal into Eren’s mouth and wiping up his chin. “We need to talk.”

Levi freezes. The words send a spike of dread through him, and a shudder runs up his spine, tracing icy fingers against every single vertebra with a shiver that has nothing to do with the cool breezes spilling through their house. “About what?” he asks, forcing his voice to stay calm. He swallows roughly, slots the sandwich triangles with shaking fingers into a Ziploc bag. He plucks a banana from the fruit bowl, squeezing slightly, not too firm, not too mushy, and peels it onto the chopping board for Eren’s snack. He cuts it into rounds, and devotes every ounce of focus he has to the task to keep himself from shaking apart at the seams.

“I can’t keep leaving work early to pick up Eren. It doesn’t look good.” No, it certainly doesn’t, and though Erwin doesn’t say anything to indicate as such, Levi feels useless. Broken, defective, eyes that cannot see and a father who cannot provide.

“I’ll do it.” The words burst out of him, eager to please, but even as they take form, take flight from the tip of his tongue, Levi feels himself starting to believe. Erwin, however, is a different matter.

“You can’t.” His reply is short, curt, punctuated with a soft aside to Eren to please try and get more oatmeal in his mouth than on his chin, thank you very much.

“I can,” Levi insists, piling the rounds of cut banana into a small Tupperware and stacking it neatly in the bottom of Eren’s lunchbox. “I could walk that route blindfolded.” He winces at the choice of words, almost instantly, but they’re too late to take back, and if the jilted pause from Erwin’s half of the kitchen means what he thinks it does, he can tell Erwin is grimacing at the tactless reminder of Levi’s deficiencies.

“I won’t let you.”

Anger replaces the dread, a boiling bubble in the pit of his belly that has Levi snapping the lunchbox closed and marching over to the kitchen table, taking care to swing extra wide around the jut of the kitchen counter. Banging himself against the tile would leave another bruise, another point for Erwin, and Levi is determined to reestablish the fact that he is not lesser, that he never has been and never will be. He all but slams the lunchbox down on the kitchen table, and he can feel the weight of Erwin’s and Eren’s gazes on him, one irritated, one curious.

“Can’t, or won’t?” Called into question, Levi begins to wonder if he himself knows what he’s asking. His voice is shaking, dangerous with anger and bitter resentment, and he thinks that maybe Erwin has a point, that maybe he really does martyr himself for the sheer self-satisfaction of it all. “Can’t, or won’t, Erwin? I said I’ll do it, and I will.”

Erwin sighs heavily, and the blur of his hand comes up to pinch at the bridge of his nose, the way it does whenever he’s trying to stave off a particularly bad migraine. If his face were more in focus, Levi would be able to see the furrows that have formed between his eyebrows as he frowns, would probably have tried to smooth them out with gentle caresses and gentler fingers, but as it is, Levi is too angry and Erwin is too unclear. Tender remarks have no place here, not now, and Levi sends them out the door with angry kisses folded into the curves of their cheeks, one smooth and chubby, the other chiseled and firm against his lips.

 

* * *

 

The anger leaches out of him sometime around mid-morning, a thick liquid spilling through a strainer. He loads their washer with laundry, bundles of clothes and bed linens, shoves the door closed and measures in a capful of detergent, sighing with relief as he taps at the buttons and the familiar sound of water rushing into the machine. He sits on the overturned laundry basket, resting his head in his hands as he hunches over and watches the clothes begin to swirl around in a sudsy pool. It’s comforting, every color distinct and beautiful in its own indiscernible way, and the slish slosh of the water inside the washer provides a soft backdrop to his mind, settling his churning thoughts.

 

* * *

 

The afternoon creeps around, the autumn sunshine marching lightly across the living room, and Levi slips on a coat, slips on his shoes, slips his wallet, phone, and keys into a pocket and heads out the door to pick Eren up from school.

It’s terrifyingly new, and terrifyingly familiar, and every step leads him into previously uncharted territory that his footsteps already know. Every sensation is magnified tenfold, the brightness of the afternoon painting across his vision. Cars whirl past, bright streaks of greens and whites and reds, the hot smell of asphalt rising off the road, and slowly, slowly, the familiar buildings of the school rise up like a smear of beige clouds. Levi makes his way across the field, the grass prickling at his ankles, and sorts himself among the other assembled parents to wait for the shrill of the school bell.

It comes, mere minutes later, and brightly clothed swarms of children spill out of the buildings into waiting parents’ arms, and Levi is overcome with anxiety, his eyes flitting from one child to the next, unable to distinguish their features. His imagination runs wild, Eren running into a stranger’s car, Eren getting lost, Eren, Eren, Eren –

“Papa!” A tiny hand grabs his own, hanging loose by his side, and he looks down to rest his eyes thankfully on a familiar shock of chocolate brown hair, pinpricks of turquoise looking up at him. “Daddy said you would come.”

Oh, yes. Levi wants to swallow his bitterness. Daddy had said, so of course it must be true, and the small moment of triumph and relief he’d allowed himself for getting to the school unscathed dissipated into thin air. As if on cue, his phone vibrated in his coat pocket, and he dug it out, peering fruitlessly at the screen before swiping it to answer anyway.

“Hello?” he asked.

“Hey, it’s me.” Erwin’s tone was soft, caressing almost, in his ear. “You got Eren okay?”

“Yeah,” Levi replied, letting Eren lead him down the sidewalk. “We’re just heading home now.”

“Okay.” A pause, infinitesimal, during which Levi could almost hear Erwin thinking of what to say next, what rope to throw out to bridge the gap that had sprung between them. “Call me when you get home, okay?”

“Alright,” Levi agreed, and hung up, feeling as though a sort of resolution had been reached between them. Tentative, shaky, but present nevertheless.

He stumbled over a protruding square of sidewalk, falling roughly to his hands and knees, the cement hard and scraping against the heels of his hands.

“Papa! You okay?” Eren squealed, tugging at his sleeve as Levi caught his breath, winded with adrenaline, his skin starting to sting. Staggering to his feet, and taking an exaggeratedly large step to avoid the hazard, Levi held his palms to his eyes, tutting at the red scrapes that were starting to bead with blood. “You have boo-boos,” Eren informed him, and Levi grimaced a smile, assuring Eren that he would take care of them when they got home.

Relief flooded through him as they made their way up to the front door of their house, and Levi slotted the scrapes and the four tries it took for him to slot the key into the lock away for another day. He would take what he could get, and cleaned the scrapes in the sink with water and soap before sticking Band-Aids onto the skin and accepting Eren’s tiny kisses and assurances that they would get better, soon.

 

* * *

 

Children speak simple truths, their vision uncluttered from the fog of words that adults don’t say but mean every second of, and so, too, did the reparations begin that night in their bedroom.

“Hey, Levi.” The lights are out, pale moonlight spilling in through the windows, and Levi turns his head on the pillow a fraction of an inch to where Erwin’s silhouette lies cast dark stone. “Listen, I’m …” He trails off, and Levi wonders at what age we start to hold back our apologies to assuage the broken pieces of our pride. Does it start at 13, breaking away from the tender guidance of our parents? Does it start at 18, leaving the house for the first time? Who teaches us that simple “sorry”s are not all it takes to be forgiven?

“I know,” Levi murmurs after a moment, his hand fumbling blind beneath the covers to catch at Erwin’s, which flips over and squeezes back just as affectionately. “Me, too.”

“I’m trying.”

“Me, too.”

Baby steps, and Erwin’s thumb sweeps gently over the bandages on Levi’s hands, understanding.

 

* * *

 

_The weight of the world is exhausting, isn’t it, darling? I want you to know that you’re not alone._


	12. Aurora

_Homework time! I know, I know, I can hear you groaning already. But here’s what I want you to do. With your spouse, or with your significant other, or with someone you care about very much, write down a small list of what you love best about them. Then fold up your list and give it to them._

* * *

 

With Erwin’s eyes and the blessed help of red Microsoft Word squiggles, Levi types out an email to his boss detailing his recent circumstances and asking her if there is anything someone in his situation can do to keep his job. Money is tight, has always been so, and anything that Levi can bring in will be much appreciated, though Erwin will never give voice to his little inklings of gratitude.

“Surely there must be something I can do,” Levi says wryly after Erwin clicks the appropriate button to send it off into cyberspace, just a blurry whir on a dotty screen to Levi’s eyes. “Maybe I can critique music or something of the sort, instead.” It’s a lame attempt at a joke, and even his own humor falls flat on deaf ears. “My hearing’s gotten a lot better since then.”

And so the same is true of all of his senses. Touch, taste, smell, hearing, all have magnified in leaps and bounds in ways that Levi would never have thought possible, his brain trying to quickly compensate for the sudden absence of proper vision. Already, Levi has come to appreciate the smaller things, Erwin brushing kisses over the shell of his ear at night, Eren’s laughter and the pitter patter of tiny feet on the front porch as he runs to Erwin’s car, getting ready for the day ahead, the taste of freshly peeled tangerines frosty with the smell of winter, like liquid sunshine in a bright orange peel that Levi strips off in one long curl for Eren’s amusement.

As for Eren, he’s coming to terms with it, too, quickly, quickly, like only children can when the world unfurls huge and delightful before them and this is just another obstacle to be climbed over and conquered.

“What does blind mean, Papa?” he asks one day after Levi picks him up from school. He’s learned to recognize his son’s unruly mop of chocolate brown hair, has learned to recognize the way Eren walks and runs and plays so he can pick him out among the colorful silhouettes on the school’s playing field. Eren clings to Levi’s hand when they cross the street, leading him, guiding him, and Levi can’t help a grin from spilling across his face at how the roles have changed, at how quickly his son is growing, carrying the weight of responsibilities in his little backpack as though they are small enough to fit in the plastic pouch. “Daddy says you’re blind, now, so I have to be extra extra careful when I cross the street with you!”

“Daddy’s right,” Levi replies, marveling at the way his hand can wrap around Eren’s, and savoring the moment, a tactile memory for years down the road when Eren will tug away in his bouts for independence. “And you should always be extra extra careful when you cross the street. Blind means I can’t see like you can anymore.”

“Oh?” Eren wants to know, and when Levi looks down, all he can make out is a smudge of cream, the silhouette of a button nose, the rosebud of a mouth. “But Armin said that blind people have to wear sunglasses all the time, and they have dogs.” Eren thinks for a moment, focusing on the sidewalk, guiding Levi over the jagged slab of cement that he’s already learned to avoid on his own. “Does that mean we’ll get a doggie, Papa?”

Levi has to stifle a laugh, ruffling Eren’s hair, silky through his fingertips. “We’ll see,” he murmurs, musing that perhaps it wouldn’t be such a bad idea. “But Papa’s not as blind as all that, you know. Papa can still see things, too.”

“Like what?”

“Hmm…” Levi takes a deep breath, chilly in his lungs, and draws his jacket closer around himself. Winter’s coming in, quickly, quickly now, and the leaves gather on the sides of the sidewalk and roads in drifts of beautiful scarlet and orange. “Like the colors of the sky and the leaves falling, and what you look like when you’re smiling, and when Miss Petra gives you a frowny face sticker because you’ve been talking in class, you little chatterbox.”

Eren gives a gasp of indignation, and Levi laughs, crisp and clear in the air, as he reassures his son that he sees the gold stars Miss Petra puts on his weekly report card, too.

* * *

 

“Your boss emailed back,” Erwin informs him, when Levi hands his phone over to him later that night and asks what mail came in with the little ding. “You want me to read it to you?”

“If you’d be so kind.” Levi’s head is in the crook of Erwin’s neck, breathing in the soft smell of soap and clean cotton, eyelashes beating against his pulse, languid and sleepy. Close.

“She’s very sorry to hear about your recent blindness,” Erwin reads. “There’s some batty stuff about condolences, do you want to hear about that?” Levi shakes his head, pressing a kiss to the jut of Erwin’s collarbone, feathering along the skin, and wondering why he’s never before appreciated just how good he and Erwin are together. He’s always hated the taste of pity. “Hmm…She doesn’t get to the point, does she?” Erwin’s scrolling through the contents of the email, and Levi sighs as he nudges kisses to Erwin’s neck, loving in small portions all equally representative of the whole. “Oh! Let’s see. While reading text will undoubtedly be difficult, there are a few other options available to you that will allow you to stay on as a critic. The backlog of books in Braille is immense. If this is a project you might like to participate in, please let me know!! Two exclamation points, Levi. Two. She must really like you.”

Erwin turns to feather a kiss along Levi’s forehead, a slight hint of chap against Levi’s skin, and Levi sighs, tilting his face up for a kiss so tender that it sends sparks of pleasure flushing through him already. Sensitive, more so than he’s ever been, and Erwin never hesitates to lay love into his senses with soft words and softer caresses, playing him like an instrument and plucking at all his well-oiled strings to turn their love into a rhapsody.

“You’ll help me learn, won’t you? All those dots will be confusing,” Levi breathes as Erwin gently nudges him into the pillows, pressing kisses to the hollow of Levi’s throat, the swell of his collarbones, pushing up his nightshirt to kiss at creamy flesh.

“Of course I will,” Erwin breathes, promises heated against Levi’s skin, and Levi allows himself to be told he’s beautiful, that he is not less than, that he always has and always will be Erwin’s better half.

The reaffirmations send giddy butterflies dancing through his mind, and he falls in love with Erwin all over again, looks in the mirror to find that the man Erwin has made him into does not lack for anything.

* * *

 

_Now ask them to unfold the paper and read it back to you. They’ll be confused, certainly. What did you write down? Probably things like “I love the way you smile when you’re sleeping,” “I love the way you make me laugh,” “I love the way all my days are sunny when you’re around.” Listen carefully. Don’t you think they feel this way about you, too? Learn to love yourself just as they can, and realize that roses are all the more beautiful for their thorns._


	13. Autograph

_And to think, that you have lived through all the worst days of your life. Amazing, isn't it?_

* * *

 

An Introductory Guide to Braille arrives the very next week, the book heavy and glossy, the title raised in large colorful letters on the hard cover that skim slippery beneath Levi’s fingers. The embossed dots along the pages are small and hard beneath his fingertips, and as he runs his forefinger over one page and the next, skimming through the lines, a sort of despair fills him and infects him with hopelessness. The worlds that had been previously open and accessible to him seem to dissipate with every ridge and bump, and he peers anxiously at the large typed letters in the headers of every page.

“A,” this page reads. One raised dot to the left side of Levi’s forefinger. Okay. Perhaps not so bad. He turns the page carefully, the thick glossy paper making a wobbly noise as he flips to the next page.

“B.” Two dots on the left side of Levi’s forefinger. It is manageable, he supposes, but a lot of practice will be needed to be able to distinguish the spacings, the number of dots, the way the letters flow seamlessly into words into paragraphs into books.

He practices, and practices, and practices, and slowly, Levi learns to read again. The words trickle up through his touch, welling symphonies through his nerves as they dance up to his mind, and Levi has thought that the letters have never been so beautiful.

The reading goes slower now, and he spends whole mornings tracing through the Introductory Guide to Braille, deciphering out paragraphs and neat little tool tips placed on the sides of the pages that help him to distinguish one letter from the next. Daylight slips through the window, the sun ticking its rays across the floor with every hour, but Levi no longer has to move to get the best light, no longer has to lean over and switch on the lamp on the table as the world slips into its winter solstice and darkness starts to fall at four in the afternoon.

“Papa,” Eren announces proudly, one wintry afternoon where the sky is airbrushed over with grey clouds, their bellies heavy with the weight of yet unshed snow. Levi shivers in the cold, rubbing gloved hands over his arms through his jacket, and waits patiently for Eren to shove his little arms unceremoniously through his puffy bright green fleece coat that Levi can easily pick out from a distance. “I got my first book from the libwawy today.”

“Oh? Is that right?” Levi asks, smiling down at Eren, whose toothy grin he doesn’t need perfect vision to see.  

He bends down, the cement of the sidewalk chilly against his knees through his jeans, to help Eren with the zip of his jacket. He fumble with it for a few moments, the metal tab and teeth of the zipper chilly against his fingertips, and snugs it up to Eren’s chin before leaning forward to press a kiss to the curved rosiness of his son’s cheek. Eren makes a big show of wiping it off with the back of his hand, dramatically, and Levi can’t help but laugh. Only youth wipes away the traces of love with indignation, as though it might be shameful to admit that your heart and soul have been captured by another and are no longer yours alone.

“Are you going to read it to me?” Levi asks, as Eren seizes his hand and starts to march them in the direction of home. They pause on the corner, looking right, left, right for cars, and Levi can almost hear the little cogs and gears in his son’s head spinning as he contemplates the question.

“But Papa can wead,” Eren protests as they cross the street and up onto the opposite curb. Levi’s already learned, through several afternoons of rote practice, how high the step is, and no longer exaggerates, no longer stumbles. “Papa is supposed to wead to Eren.”

“But you’re getting to be such a big boy,” Levi reminds him, a reminiscence of this morning when Eren had plucked his plastic spoon out of Levi’s hand and insisted that he feed himself. He was growing up, wildly, rampantly, and Levi had been tempted to snatch the spoon back and preserve Eren’s childhood years for as long as possible. “Surely they’ve been teaching you your alphabets in kindergarten, hmm?”

Eren pauses, hopping over a puddle left from some careless neighbor’s sprinkler.

“I guess,” he murmurs, after a moment of hard contemplation. “But Papa still has to wead me a bedtime stowy!”

“Yes, yes, Papa will,” Levi assures him, ruffling a hand through Eren’s silky hair, and wonders when Eren will realize that the stories Levi has been telling him do not exist between the cardboard covers of his picture books. They spill from fantasy, a world where everything that goes wrong can be resolved within a few pages and pictures, where everyone is happy and healthy and whole. Levi knows that one day Eren will ask him why his words don’t match the ones in the book, but for now, cherishing the made-up beliefs that send his son spiraling dizzy into sleep are enough.

* * *

 

“And he…” Eren squints at the page later that night, after he has already been bathed and bundled into his fleecy flannel pajamas. “And he…Hoofed!” he pronounces grandly, and Erwin stifles a laugh into the curve of his hand even as Levi pinches at his thigh in a silent warning not to. “And he poofed!” Levi settles back into the curl of Erwin’s arm, slung over the back of the couch. “And he blew da house down!” Eren finishes, proudly.

Levi claps politely. Eren’s smile is visible from space.

They grow together.

* * *

 

“How was your day, Lee?” Erwin asks him, after Eren’s been tucked into bed. It’s still too early for them to fall asleep, and they’re lounging tangled on the couch, existing in that comfortable bubble of soft quiet that people who understand each other have. “Read any interesting things?”

Levi shrugs, turning his cheek to feel Erwin’s heartbeat against his chest. “Did you know your lips have one of the highest concentrations of touch receptors in your body, other than your fingertips?”

“Is that right?” Erwin asks, and Levi exults in the sultry tone that’s entered his voice. Rough, husky, a thrumming baritone that Levi sinks into and surrounds himself with, secure in the intonation of the syllables. “Care to show me?”

Levi reaches up to brush his fingertips over Erwin’s mouth, tracing at the swell of Erwin’s lower lip with a careful thumb before he props himself up and begins to touch in earnest. He taps dots into the press of Erwin’s mouth like a page, two dots, three, three, four, two, before Erwin reaches up to wrap fingers around his wrist and ask him what he’s doing.

“Spelling,” Levi breathes, “but I guess you already know what I’m saying.” He leans forward, bangs falling into his eyes like a dark curtain that Erwin slicks back as they kiss, licking love into flames that burn brightly and crackle quiet, cautious of the little boy sleeping upstairs.

* * *

 

Sticky, sated, Levi nestles comfortably into Erwin’s embrace, pressing kisses to every inch of skin he can reach. The world is a hush, save for the soft rasp of Erwin’s breathing and the dull throb of his heart against Levi’s cheek, until another sound that Levi can only describe as silver trickles into his consciousness.

“Erwin, it’s snowing,” he murmurs, and Erwin replies drowsily that it’s not, there’s no way he can know that.

“It’s snowing,” he mumbles, more insistently even as his mouth falls slack around his syllables in sleepiness, and he wakes up the next morning, swaddled in bed and the tight circle of Erwin’s embrace, to look through the window and find that the world is blanketed with white.

* * *

 

_You have survived, you have made it through situations and events and relationships, and you are still here, talking to me. How brave you are. Can I ask for an autograph?_


	14. Auditorium

_A star does not look over to its neighbor, light-years away, to wonder what it is doing, to wonder if maybe it needs to shine brighter or better. A star just twinkles, lovely and sweet as can be for anyone who cares to look for it in the sky._

* * *

 

The days pick up, faster and faster and faster, and Levi’s fingers practically fly over the pages. He doesn’t need the light, not anymore, and the words come back to him like old friends and eager new acquaintances, fluttering up into his mind and forming into images all their own. The upraised dots of Braille have given Levi back his sight, at least for matters like this, and he’s started to record his thoughts and reviews on his phone for Erwin to play back later and carefully transcribe into typed text without typos, Levi’s voice from the last few hours fluttering gently into his ear.

Levi knows how to type on their trusty run-down and repatched desktop, but he lives for the evenings when Erwin lies down with him in bed and uses his company laptop to give Levi’s words voice again. 

Like this, they waltz through time, dancing lightly through seconds into hours into days, and collectively they settle once again, the aftershocks slowly sinking back into the earth.

The morning of Eren’s school’s holiday play dawns, and, much to Levi’s surprise, Eren is the first one up. 

The sunrise slicks into their bedroom with creeping petals of fingers that stroke across the planes of Levi’s cheeks, crawling across his mouth, brushing against his eyelashes with their warmth. Fluttering, being drawn out of the last vestiges of a dream that is already slipping through his fingers like water, Levi opens silver eyes to trace the shadow Erwin’s limbs cast against the milky sheets, a blur of beiges and creams and roses that meld together into the finest of slurries. 

He reaches out, movements tentative so as not to wake him too soon, he slides his fingers into the loose gaps between Erwin’s, still lax and pliant with sleep. His hand has already long learned how to fit themselves together, and even in his dreams, Erwin’s thumb twitches lightly against his own, rubbing soft comfort like velvet into his skin. 

Levi’s heartbeat is gentle in his ears. Steady. Safe. He counts the seconds between the pulse with measured breaths, savoring the soothing quiet punctuated only by the soft susurrus of Erwin’s breaths, the rhythmic rise and fall. 

A pitter patter of tiny feet against the hardwood has him half-turning to the open bedroom door, where he can just make out the fadings in of a rosy face, a shock of dark hair, blue pajamas with some sort of fuzzy animal dancing across them. Pandas, he thinks, they’re certainly splotchy black and white enough for that.

He holds out his other hand, palm up, an offering and an acceptance, but Eren ignores him and pats his way around to the other side of the bed, all but crawling over Erwin to settle himself with a sigh in the middle of the mattress. Erwin grumbles something, and Levi hides his laugh in the curve of his palm as their son jabs Erwin in the stomach with a well-placed elbow as he fills the infinitesimal hollow between them to completion.

“Eren,” he murmurs admonishingly, but with a laugh in his voice, “you shouldn’t do that. Daddy is still sleeping.” 

Eren yawns, the blur of a rosebud mouth opening wide into pinker, redder darkness, and brings a hand up to rub at his eyes. Turquoise, brilliant and incandescent in their beauty, and Levi savors the lovely color with all the ways he knows how to.

“Papa’s up,” he complains, but his voice is low, a quiet chirping so Erwin only barely stirs, only barely twitches in the sheets. Eren’s hand comes up to Levi’s face, the smudge of a tiny starfish reaching out to pat at his cheeks, to trace over his forehead and the bridge of his nose and the lines of his mouth, fingertips tickling against his skin. Memorizing, seeing like Levi does. “Eren’s up. Daddy should be up, too. I am a snowflake today!” 

This last announcement has Erwin shifting beside them. “Daddy is up,” he groans. Levi catches Eren’s chubby wrist in his hand, presses a kiss to the open palm before letting him go, laughing and squealing, into Erwin’s arms and scruffy embrace itchy with the shadow of a beard. Levi knows it well, delights in the way Erwin sometimes rubs his cheeks and jaw raw with it on lazy mornings. “He couldn’t sleep after you hit him in the stomach like that.” 

They get up, get dressed, and Eren is all but vibrating in his seat as he eagerly wiggles around, youthful impatience, wanting to get to school as quickly as possible so he can see all of his friends and prepare for the holiday festival they’re having to end the calendar school year on. Levi looks forward to it, three long weeks at home with Eren and childish babbling to bring color and sound to his days that border on monotony. It will be delightful, and Levi can hardly wait, either. 

* * *

 

Erwin’s taken a half day at work so he can see Eren perform in the play as well, and he sits patiently beside Levi in the auditorium now to watch and record in fascination the smears and splashes of color that run and leap across the stage, childish voices lifted in beautifully discordant harmony. It’s a scene that Levi’s been picturing his entire life, and he finds it all the more poignant because it’s been left to play out to his imagination, clarity amongst the confusion. 

It will be Christmas soon, the clock ticking over another year onto Levi’s age, and Erwin reaches out to squeeze Levi’s fingers between his own, having long ago learned how to fit themselves together without a breath, without a thought.

* * *

 

_We are all stardust._


	15. Applause

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading~

_We’ve come to the end of the book, darling. The final chapter, the final page, the final sentence. But rest assured that what we’ve accomplished during our short time together will stay with you for the rest of your life. And hey, even if it doesn’t, even if you forget, what better way to reacquaint ourselves than picking up the book again and turning to the first page?_

_There will be peaks and valleys in your life. Topography exists in everyone. May your valleys never be too deep, and may your peaks be often and well-deserved._

* * *

It is not darkness. He sees the world like the finest of artists, Monet, Cezanne, Pissarro, a blur of colors washing across his vision like rain streaking across glass. The written word has lost its meaning for him, a slurry of dark ink in wavering lines that shiver every time he blinks. Erwin becomes a silhouette, a riot of colors in yellow and brown and blue and whatever tones he’s wearing that particular day, and sometimes Levi desperately wishes he could see clearly again, to see the expression in Erwin’s eyes, to know and understand the curve of his mouth and see how plush lips, a soft pink smear across his face, shape themselves around his words. 

But blindness is not all bad, either. His other senses, especially his hearing, have become more attuned to the nuances Erwin reads him the news every morning across breakfast, crinkling the paper comfortingly, his words and his sentences rich and deep like the coffee that he puts in front of Levi’s hand sweet and creamy with Hazelnut Coffeemate. His voice is warm and soothing, wrapping around Levi like a soft down comforter, and Levi hugs his phrases tight to his body, finding previously unseen universes in the simplest ‘Good morning.’ 

Eating, true, has become a bit of a chore, but it’s always a delightful surprise to not know what is on the plate in front of him. He looks down, sees a slick of green, and lifts a spoon to his mouth expecting broccoli only to experience the delightful burst of peas against his tongue. He finds that now he can dissect Erwin’s emotions from the way his kiss tastes: like dark chocolate when he is happy, cinnamon when he is irritated, the smooth flavor of cream at his most contented. Levi loves them all, and tries to taste as much as possible. 

If there were a sense that Levi does not particularly care to have become more sensitive, it would be his sense of smell. The comforting scent of the lavender Downy Erwin uses to wash their sheets has become too strong, too acerbic, too much, and Levi suffers through it for all of three nights before begging Erwin to kindly switch to an unscented detergent. Erwin complies, and Levi hugs Erwin’s pillow to his chest after Erwin leaves for work each morning, breathing in the way he smells, like soap and linen and something else undefinable. He knows that the smell of someone’s skin is the scent of their skin cells shedding, but he accepts it, inhaling deeply to consume and devour and integrate. 

And touch! What a thing it is to touch and be touched. He has become so much more sensitive, already close to coming, already on the cusp of orgasm when Erwin sucks kisses into the tender skin of his neck. It is like returning to adolescence, excitable and inexperienced, and Levi would otherwise have been embarrassed had he not been so busy trying to create a touch map of the planes of Erwin’s skin. He wants to know every scar, every wrinkle, every curve of muscle and sinew. 

It is not darkness. It is just a different form of light. 

* * *

 

And so like this, they come full circle, settling back into the old rhythms of themselves with just the smallest added caveat. But it is no matter; what has been taken away gives back a hundred, a thousandfold, and they slip easily into the nuances of what cannot be seen and find themselves understanding so much more than before.

Eren starts to read Levi the stories whose words he can no longer decipher, whose bright colors only start to metamorphose into recognizable shapes when he holds his face millimeters from the page. Their son’s literacy grows by leaps and bounds, and soon it is a struggle for Levi to encourage him away from the school’s library after class is over. Eren’s squeaking voice resonates around the house, and Levi drinks in every syllable, every little story and every babble, committing it firmly to memory.

He accepts it, accepts the hand that Fate has dealt him, and together, both as a couple and as a family, he and Erwin manage.

* * *

_You can do it. I’m cheering for you._


End file.
